1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of generating an attention indication for a dairy animal that is kept in an environment with a freely accessible robotic milking system. The invention also relates to a device for carrying out said method.
2. Description of the Related Art
With robotic milking systems, i.e. systems in which dairy animals are milked fully automatically, the dairy animals are kept in an environment in which they determine themselves the point of time of visiting the robot, in particular the point of time of milking, without constant human supervision. It is therefore of importance to be able to detect abnormalities, or at least abnormalities that demand attention, in a reliable manner, so that appropriate action can be taken.
In the state of the art, many methods and systems are known to monitor the physical condition or deviations therefrom. Examples thereof are milk conductivity meters, milk colour meters and the like for mastitis detection, step counters or thermometers and the like for heat, etcetera.
A drawback of the known methods and systems is that they often make use of one or more measuring devices, which do not always function in an accurate and/or reliable manner. At any rate, such a meter also results in an increased complexity of the robotic milking system.